Everyday Miracle
by Adara-chan67
Summary: Sequel to Nothing Endures But Change. The title's not great, but it was all I could come up with. Oneshot, songfic, no pairings. I can't think of a summary that won't give it away, so just READ.


DISCLAIMER: You guessed it: nothing's mine. Let's move on.

* * *

_If I could tell the world just one thing, _

_It would be we're all okay,_

_And not to worry 'cause worry is wasteful _

_And useless in times like these._

_I won't be made useless._

_I won't be idle with despair._

_I will gather around my faith,_

_For light does the darkness most fear._

It was an interesting thing, this "change," Sam Winchester reflected, sitting in his brother's hospital room long after the machines had finally fallen silent. It could come in an _instant_, and there was no telling when it would choose to show up.

But change could also come as slowly as the turn of the seasons, and such was the change that had come over Sam in the last twenty-two years. Such was the change that caused him to sit quietly in this chair, his expression blank and locked down while his brother lay dead not two feet away.

Sam had learned a long time ago not to let his emotions through, because emotions could kill you in the end. And so he developed a mask, and he assumed it whenever he felt that it was dangerous to show what he really felt.

He took the mask now, but not because he thought emotion dangerous at this moment. Random breakouts of both joy and sorrow were common here. Still, the mask was automatic, more than anything else, now.

So, he sat, his thoughts and feelings in such turmoil that he felt physically ill, though, unbelievably, his eyes remained dry.

It was nearly half an hour before he so much as moved, but when he did it was all at once. He pushed his tall, lanky frame out of his chair, leaned over the bed, pressed his hand over Dean's one more time, and turned to leave.

_My hands are small, I know,_

_But they're not yours, they are my own.  
But they're not yours, they are my own,_

_And I am never broken._

"I don't understand that man," the head nurse said softly, as she and Dr. Grey left the hospital room. "He's not even…sad. Or surprised. Or even angry. He doesn't seem to _feel_ it. I don't understand…"

Dr. Grey sighed. "I don't, either, Dana. And I don't want to."

"Why not?" Dana asked, going behind her desk and stepping up to the computer. She didn't touch the keyboard, however—her eyes remained trained on Dr. Grey. "Isn't it your job to get in peoples' heads?"

"Yeah, as the hospital psychologist it _is_ my job. As a human being, though, it's not a job I want in this case."

Dana looked puzzled, and Dr. Grey went on to clarify, starting to feel sorry for entering this conversation in the first place.

"Look, it only take simple deduction to figure out that Sam Winchester has been through hell in his life. How else could he shut himself down like that? I can't imagine what he's gone through, and I don't want to. But I do think that you've misunderstood him, Dana—it's not that he doesn't feel this. In fact, I believe he feels it more keenly than anyone who has ever been in his position. I think he just can't _show_ it."

"But isn't that…um…unhealthy?" Dana asked hesitantly.

"For most people, yes. For Sam Winchester…I couldn't tell you, because for the first time I've met a person that I can't even _begin_ to figure out."

Dana was about to answer him when Sam Winchester himself walked through the lobby. Nothing in his stride betrayed whatever it was he was feeling, nor his face, and again Dana wondered what there was inside him that made him the way he was.

"No, I can't even begin to figure him out," Dr. Grey repeated, as if to himself. "But I will tell you one thing I know—he's got strength, and a lot of it."

He felt himself growing more and more intrigued by this man, this stranger, with every step that widened the distance between them. He'd very rarely met someone who was a mystery to him. Maybe that was what caused Dana to look so strangely at him, what made him watch so closely and think so hard as Sam left the hospital—shaking the place but not the heartbreak.

"I just hope it'll be enough."

_Poverty stole your golden shoes, _

_But it didn't steal your laughter._

_And heartache came to visit me, _

_But I knew it wasn't ever after._

_We'll fight, not out of spite,_

_For someone must stand up for what's right,_

'_Cause where there's a man who has no voice,_

_There ours shall go, singing._

Sam drove the Impala back to the motel. Truly, it was a wonder that he remembered it, but actually he didn't even have to search. His feet seemed to have a mind of their own, and moved purposefully through the parking lot toward the old black car so beloved by Dean, and now, by extension, Sam.

He drove as blindly as a man can and still arrive at his destination alive, and the entire time he didn't think. On the drive to the hospital, he'd done nothing _but_ think, but now, his mind was so tangled that picking it apart was pointless even to consider. So he did the next-best thing—he ignored them, and was relieved to do so because it meant that he could stop feeling, if only for a little while.

But as is the way with such things, the more he ignored his thoughts, the clearer they became. The confusion began to ease off as he reached the freeway, and by the time he reached the second stoplight, something else began to take shape inside him.

By the time Sam walked into his room ten minutes after leaving the hospital, the feeling had formed completely, and finally Sam could name what he felt.

Anger. Cold and sharp, it pierced the thicket of emotion inside him, brushing them aside as winter wind brushes aside everything in its path. But where anger should have clouded his judgment and pushed him into room-wrecking or some such nonsense, it was actually doing the exact opposite. The anger was a blessing for Sam. It cleared the confusion from his mind, and kept him sane when he otherwise would have lost his mind fairly quickly. It allowed him to think, to plan, and it gave him the strength to do so.

Sam threw himself onto the bed, rolled over, and pressed his back up against the headboard, his eyes carefully avoiding Dean's empty bed. Then he fell to thinking, to figuring out exactly what he was supposed to do next.

It didn't take long to come up with the answer.

Vengeance.

It wasn't something he'd been planning on. He knew from long, sad experience that seeking revenge got you nowhere, and only bred more anger. But this was somehow—different. Somehow, Sam had the feeling that seeking and acting on revenge was the only way he would be able to put aside the anger that could become so dangerous if embraced too long.

And it wasn't as if he was seeking to hurt a human being. No, all _he_ was going to hunt was something undeniably evil, and soulless, something that had taken the life of Sam's older brother and left him alone in the world, and done it without a thought.

So all in all, Sam thought, the thing would be getting off _easy_, since he simply planned to kill it, and quickly, too.

After all, what was the point of prolonging it, when in the end everything would stay exactly the same anyway?

_My hands are small, I know,_

_But they're not yours, they are my own._

_But they're not yours, they are my own,_

_And I am never broken._

Sam got his supplies together quickly, mainly because there really wasn't much to get together. Weapons would only slow him down, and salt would be likewise ineffective. So really, all he needed was the book of incantations that the brothers had used before. But finding it took a few minutes, and for a horrid moment he even thought that he'd left it back at the hospital, before he found it tucked safely under the front seat of the Impala.

But even with the search for the book, it took only ten minutes before Sam was on the road again, surprisingly steady in both mind and body. Maybe it was because he finally had something to do, but the turmoil he'd been immersed in before had faded completely, leaving him clear-headed and ready to face whatever was coming.

The house looked exactly the same as it had when he'd left it last night—overgrown with grass and weeds, covered in ivy and broken wood, dark and forbidding and ancient. It gave no hint of the heartbreak and pain it had brought to the life of the man now beating a path through its yard, and for a moment Sam wondered if he could actually stand to do this.

The moment was brief, however, and then the anger steeled him again, and he continued on twice as determined as he'd been before. With each step, he picked up the pace, so that by the time he reached the door he was practically running, and as a result the door was flung open rather explosively.

Sam stood in the doorway for a time, listening, as the echo of the door slam died away, and wondering if the will-o'-the-wisp would take as long to show itself as it had before. Not that it mattered—Sam had already formed his plan, and it did not involve him moving any further into the house than this spot, simply because going further was just _stupid._

So, he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Now, normally that would have been okay, because Sam had long since adjusted to extended waits, and in fact he'd almost come to welcome them, though he didn't know why. But tonight…tonight was different. Tonight, he was on pins and needles, his entire body tight as a drum, feeling quite ready to explode at any given moment. He just…wanted it to be _over_, but that couldn't happen until the thing _showed_ itself. Still, he refused to show his tension, even if there was nothing to see him except an evil, dark being, and so by the time the little floating light appeared, Sam was leaning nonchalantly against the cracking wall, arms hanging, the book clasped loosely in his hand.

His posture changed within the next heartbeat, though, and as the little ball danced toward him, he swung his arm up and let the book fall open.

It was all so _easy_ this time—entirely anticlimactic. He kept his eyes on the spell the entire time, and yet he somehow knew _exactly_ where the 'wisp was, every second, and so was able to dodge easily every single time it came at him.

Later, he would think about why he was able to do that so easily, but he never came up with an answer. Maybe his anger helped him, or maybe the sorrow he had experienced in the last half a day had sharpened his senses somehow. But whatever the reason, within five minutes he'd completed the spell, the light began to fade slowly…

And then there was a sense of _pressure_. It was so great that it nearly drove Sam to his knees, and with it came this overwhelming feeling of pain, suffering, imprisonment…and finally_...release_.

Then the light, the pressure, and the sensations were gone, and Sam could breathe again.

And scarcely ten miles away, Dean Winchester woke with a start.

_In the end, only kindness matters._

_In the end, only kindness matters. _

_I will get down on my knees, and I will pray._

_I will get down on my knees, and I will pray._

_I will get down on my knees, and I will pray._

Dean lay on the cold metal table, panting, eyes wide and confused, with no idea of where he was or how he'd gotten there. And also a little…nervous. Not frightened, just nervous, mainly because he couldn't feel anything at all. And mostly, he felt _tired_. He wasn't _sleepy, _but he felt a bone-deep weariness that made him feel quite content to just lay there for a long, long time.

Without moving, he cast his eyes around, taking in his surroundings with a practiced eye.

Metal table…white sheets…blank walls…drawers in the walls…disturbing human lumps under the white sheets…And then it hit him, and even he, with all of his forays into the strange and unexplained, felt more than a little shocked. Damn…I'm in the morgue! As if it were a trigger, that last word brought on a flash of memories. He remembered arguing with Sam…he remembered fighting the will-o'-the-wisp…and he remembered it brushing against him, just lightly, and then his entire body had seized up and he'd… 

_Died? I died? As in _died,_ died?_

Well, technically Dean Winchester was already dead, but he'd never _died_ before.

And he'd certainly never been recalled to life before. It kind of made him wonder what else he was in for in the future.

He did wonder how exactly he'd come back, but only for a moment, because he just didn't _care_. The point was, he was alive, and Sam—

Oh, God, Sam…how could he have forgotten Sam? He must be so upset right now…and there was no _telling_ the things Sam was prone to do when he was upset.

The thought spurred him into action, and he sat up in one jerky, stiff movement.

And bit back a yell, because it _hurt_, like every part of him was being stuck with needles…or bullets. He hadn't expected _that_.

Still, it didn't slow him down long. He had more important things to think about. He just waited for the first pains to subside, then swung his legs over the side of the uncomfortable table, and hopped down.

His legs buckled slightly, but he managed to remain upright, and after a few moments he steadied himself enough to stay standing without too much help from the table, and then to stand without any support at all.

So, next step—finding Sam.

Then he looked down, and grimaced.

_No. Scratch that. Next step—finding _clothes

_Then _Sam.

_My hands are small, I know,_

_But they're not yours, they are my own._

_But they're not yours, they are my own,_

_And I am never broken._

Sam thought that the emotion of anger was rather comparable to the Berlin Wall. While it was there, it was useful on one hand and on the other it was the very bane of existence. Sam's anger was the same way—it was useful while he was doing his job, because it kept his feelings from completely overwhelming him. But on the other hand, it kept him from feeling anything _else_.

But even the Berlin Wall came down eventually, and so it was with the wall that was Sam's anger. As he headed back to the motel, he felt the wall between anger and the tangle of other emotions slowly beginning to tear itself apart, and by the time he reached his room, the anger was simmering rather from being at a full boil, and he was at least capable of thinking beyond it.

Well, enough to notice that there was a package at his door, anyway.

Puzzled, Sam stopped to pick up the square cardboard box, and felt the oddest sinking sensation when he looked at the stamp across the top. After staring at it for a moment, he reached out with one hand and unlocked the door, keeping an arm wrapped tightly around the box.

Once he was safely enclosed in the room, he went slowly to the bed, and set the box down on it, himself remaining standing. His movements were hesitant and careful as he slit the tape and opened the flaps, and even more so as he reached in. But finally, he drew out the contents.

There were three things in there. First was a couple of plain bracelet bands, the kind you could get basically anywhere at two bucks a pop.

Sam held them for a moment as if they were precious gems, then set them on the nightstand and reached into the box again, to pull out a large, oddly-shaped pendant on a black cord.

This item was more unusual than the bracelets, and Sam held it for a long time, remembering the day he'd given it to Dean for Christmas five years before, the last year before he'd left for Stanford. He hadn't known then that Dean would come to cherish it as he had, but in fact, from the day he'd put it on for the first time, the older Winchester had never removed that necklace. Sam turned it over and over in his hands, then curled his fist around it and reached back in without letting it go.

The last thing in the box was a long, faded leather jacket, neatly folded as Sam had never seen it before. Always before when he'd seen it, it had been either tossed over a chair or covering his brother. Sam felt his heart wrench painfully as he smoothed his fingers over the leather, and for a moment he felt as if his stomach had disappeared entirely.

Suddenly too exhausted even to stand up anymore, Sam half-fell onto the bed, shoving the now-empty box to the floor. He let Dean's jacket unfold itself as he fell back against the pillows, so that he was sort of half-sitting up and half-lying down, with the jacket held tightly against his chest and the necklace clutched in his left hand.

Whatever was left of his anger when he'd reached his room had broken entirely with the contents of the small cardboard box, and now everything the anger had blocked was beginning to surface. Grief was beginning to sink in underneath his skin where it went unseen but not unfelt. Never unfelt, but _felt_, to the fullest extent of the word, until he physically ached with it.

And still he didn't cry.

He hadn't cried since it happened.

He certainly _felt _like crying, but his eyes remained dry as the ancient bones he'd sometimes had to use in the course of his hunts.

He _should_ cry, right? His brother was…

But he couldn't. Actually, physically _couldn't_, no matter how many memories or pictures or thoughts of the endless road he now faced alone he conjured up. The only thing he accomplished was nearly killing himself when the thoughts constricted his throat and made it nearly impossible to breathe.

_Why_? He asked himself, the word almost violent in his head.

He was surprised when he replied to himself, the answer coming quickly and without warning.

_Because it would mean I'm awake. _

It was just that simple. If he cried, if tears were allowed to come, it would prove that this whole thing wasn't just some weird, extended vision, but _real_…real, and unchangeable. And he couldn't stand that—not yet.

And so Sam sat, and clutched that jacket as if it were his last hope on earth, and waited. What he was waiting for, he had no idea, but just had he'd known to go and kill the will-o'-the-wisp at one o'clock this morning, so he knew now that he had to wait, and that he'd know when the thing was waiting for arrived.

He hadn't been waiting long before it struck him like a physical blow.

_Nothing endures but change._

The words sounded familiar in his mind, but he couldn't remember where they'd come from. He thought about it, hard, and his mind brought forth something that was _almost_ a person, but fuzzy so that Sam couldn't pin down a face, and so that didn't really help.

So, he turned his mind to the words themselves.

_Nothing endures but change_.

What did that even _mean_? The very definition of change was that it _didn't_ endure. So how could it be the only thing that did endure?

Something tugged at his mind, and Sam, immediately feeling that it was something important, abandoned his question to concentrate on the thought. For a while, it eluded his grasp as the other, more annoying, question about changed continued to plague him, until he finally he banished the latter entirely in a small explosion of anger, and the former burst forth at last.

Well, actually, there wasn't enough information in the thought for it to "burst" but it did tell him _something_, anyway—enough to spur him into sudden, if rather sluggish, action. With the jacket and necklace still held firmly against his chest, he went over and got his laptop out of his bag, then went back to the bed and sat down in his usual research position—one leg tucked under him, the other dangling off the bed, and the laptop open in front of him. Almost unconsciously, he draped Dean's jacket over his shoulders like a cloak and slipped the necklace over his head before he turned the computer on.

Sam really wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he did know that it had something to do with all the research he'd turned up in the last day. So, with that in mind, he pulled up a list of his recent searches, and waited for something to jump out at him.

It wasn't long before something did.

When Sam had been researching the will-o'-the-wisp for the hunt, he'd been to almost every major site on the web. Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN…he'd been to each of them. He'd also entered but he'd only scanned the page, simply because Wikipedia's information wasn't exactly reliable.

Now, though, an alarm went off in his head the second he scrolled past it on the list, and so he clicked on t he link, despite his skepticism.

He only scanned it at first, and to his disappointment he saw nothing he hadn't already known. But just as he was about to exit the page and go on searching, his eyes, for no apparent reason, caught and held a short section near the bottom of the article.

_Most resources say that the touch of the will-o'-the-wisp kills quickly, and to the naked eye this is true. However, the 'wisp only gives the illusion of death—the pulse slows, the breathing becomes shallow, and the heart begins to fail—but in fact, the victim is very much alive. What the 'wisp is actually doing is feeding upon the soul of the victim. This is why the rest of the body remains untouched._

_A will-o'-the-wisp takes exactly twelve hours to finish absorbing a soul. When it is finished, it releases its hold, and what happens after that is up to the victim. Sometimes, the physical body will heal afterwards but the person will always be soulless and so have no personality or true life. Most commonly, though, they will simply die._

_There is only one way to save a victim of the will-o-the-wisp. The creature must be killed in less than twelve hours, and it will release all its souls. Of course, this doesn't necessarily save the person, if their body is already too far gone…_

The rest of the article became gibberish to Sam's eyes, and he turned off the laptop and put it on the nightstand, numbly. Then he slid his arms gingerly into the arms of the jacket, and just…sat there, turning it over in his mind.

_An illusion of death…very much alive…exactly twelve hours…_

What time had he killed the demon?

He had no idea. All he knew was that Dean's heart had stopped at exactly 12:01, and that he and Dean had left this room exactly at sunset.

He checked his watch, and was shocked beyond words that it was only about five in the morning. And sunset wasn't until…

_Oh, my God…_

XXX

Dean thought he was prepared for whatever he would find when he pushed open the door of his and Sam's motel a while after he'd stolen some clothes and snuck out of the hospital post-resurrection. He was ready for a torn-apart room, broken furniture, shattered lamps, a completely distraught sibling…

What he was _not _ready for the sight of a perfectly ordered room, and a completely calm Sam sitting on the bed furthest from the door, wrapped in Dean's jacket and staring into space.

_What the hell…?_

"Sammy?" he asked, a little hesitantly, because this Sam disturbed him, in many ways.

And suddenly, Sam was standing up, facing his brother, and he was looking so shocked and confused and amazed and carefully, cautiously hopeful that Dean was unsure if he was in for over-the-top chick-flick moment or a sudden and violent death.

For a long, long time—Dean could have sworn it was forever—they just stared at each other, neither of them moving or speaking. In that time every emotion under the sun flashed across Sam's face—except for that of joy. For some reason, he seemed to be holding that back.

"Dean…?"

His name came out strangled, choked, almost inaudible, and Dean had to strain to catch it. When he did, though, he said the very first thing that came to mind, because that was what Dean Winchester did.

"No, it's Santa Clause."

There was a ringing silence after Dean's gruff words, and Dean almost—almost—regretted them.

And then Sam just sort of…fell.

XXX

Sam felt as if he was suspended somewhere between waking and dreaming, like he was spinning out of orbit and flying off into deep space, out of thought and time and sanity. First Dean was dying, and then Dean was dead, and then Dean was merely soulless, and now Dean was alive and whole and here and Sam could barely breathe with the sheer impact of it and there was nothing to anchor him to the world except the feeling of the rough carpet beneath his knees and even that was rapidly disappearing.

But then there was another anchor, and this one was too strong to escape his grasp—a pair of arms, wrapped tightly and firmly around him, nearly crushing him but not in a painful way—rather, in a way that made something ride up within him—something wonderful.

For a moment, he just sat there, limp, in Dean's grasp. But that only lasted for a second or so, and then he was hugging Dean with all of his strength.

He didn't really notice when the first tears came, but soon enough he was sobbing, and laughing, at the same time, until he sounded like an absolute wreck. He couldn't even speak coherently—he just kept murmuring his brother's name, over and over and over like a mantra.

And the whole time, Dean—tough, gruff, anti-human emotion Dean Winchester—his brother, who was not dead, despite evidence to the contrary—Dean just…held him.

XXX

When he regained his sense of reality, Sam was in his bed, covered up, feeling utterly content with the world. Dean's jacket and necklace were gone, but for some reason it didn't bother him. And when he turned his head he understood why.

Over on the other bed, Dean was in his usual position, scribbling in the journal—probably some new notes about will-o'-the-wisps, though how he'd found the information, Sam had no idea. He barely looked up, but a small smile crossed his face as he spoke.

"Hey, Sammy. Or…I think it's Samantha now?"

Sam felt tears spring to his eyes at the crack, and blinked them back determinedly. "Shut up," he murmured without any heat, turning over on his side to face his brother fully. "So…uh…how're you feeling?"

Dean shrugged. "A little stiff. Guess dying does that to you. But otherwise I'm good. What about you?"

Sam was quiet for a long time, and then he spoke very quietly. "You died."

Dean looked up from the journal, and his eyes were unusually gentle, if not too emotional, which would have been un-Dean like. "I know."

Silence stretched between them, but it was comfortable and unstrained. Then—

"But you can never wear my jacket again, man. You're too tall for it, and besides, it's mine. And keep your hands off my necklace, while you're at it. And you drove my car! By yourself. I mean, seriously, man, some things are sacred—"

_It's gonna be all right._

The thought hit him suddenly, right in the middle of Dean's tirade, and he was struck by the simple truth of it. Somehow, it was all gonna be all right…

And Sam laughed.

XXX

At the hospital ten minutes away, an orderly stood in the morgue, next to an empty table, and scratching his head and wondering if the whole world was going mad, or if it was just him.

_My hands are small, I know,_

_But they're not yours, they are my own._

_But they're not yours, they are my own,_

_And I am never broken._

* * *

AN: Well, what'd you all think? Too fluffy? Not fluffy enough? Crappy? Or, dare I hope, good? PLEASE review, and make my birthday a whole lot better! 


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